Cereals and milk are key agricultural products in the EU. The total production value of cereals in the EU was 64.4 billion euros in 2021, and that of milk was 58.0 euros, with the two products contributing just under 30% to the total agricultural production value.

Castilla y León produced the highest value of cereals

There were 10 regions classified at level 2 of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS 2) that produced cereals worth over 1 billion euros in 2021.

The EU region that produced the highest-value cereals in 2021 was Castilla y León in Spain (2.3 billion euros). This was closely followed by the Centre-Val de Loire region in France (2.2 billion euros).

Among the other 8 regions that produced cereals valued at over 1 billion euros in 2021, 4 were in France (Champagne-Ardenne, Pays-de-la-Loire, Picardie, and Poitou-Charentes), 2 in Romania (South-East and South – Muntenia), one region in Lithuania (Vidurio ir vakaru Lietuvos regionas), and another region in Spain (Aragón).

Cereal-oriented

Agriculture in some regions was specifically oriented towards cereal production, even if they were not the largest cereal-producing regions. There were 4 regions where the value of cereal production was at least 40% of their total agricultural production value.

Among these, 3 were in Bulgaria - Severozapaden (53.7%), Severen Tsentralen (47.6%), Severoiztochen (44.5%), and 1 in France - Île de France (42.8%).

There were another 17 EU regions where the share of the cereal value in total agricultural production varied between 30% and 40%.

Broadly, most of these regions were clustered in the eastern part of the EU, from Bulgaria (1 region) through Romania (2 regions), Hungary (4 regions), Slovakia (2 regions), the Czech Republic (3 regions), to Lithuania (1 region).

However, there were also regions in France (two other regions), Spain (1 region), and Denmark (1 region) that relatively focused on cereal production.

South Ireland produced the highest value of milk

Agriculture in other EU regions was more oriented towards milk production. The region that produced the highest value of milk in 2021 was South Ireland (2.4 billion euros), followed by Brittany in France (2.0 billion euros), and Lombardy in Italy (1.8 billion euros).

Another 5 regions generated milk worth at least 1 billion euros: Pays-de-la-Loire and Basse-Normandie in France, Weser-Ems and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, and Galicia in Spain.

There were also other regions where dairy farming and milk production were the key types of agriculture, even if they were not the largest producers.

There were 8 regions where the share of the milk production value was at least 40% of the total agricultural production value in 2021:

Friesland in the Netherlands (47.3%), Região Autónoma dos Açores in Portugal (46.0%), Franche-Comté in France (45.6%), the southern region of Ireland (43.5%), Salzburg and Vorarlberg in Austria (43.5% each), Pohjoisja Itä-Suomi in Finland (42.7%), and Cantabria in Spain (41.3%).

In another 14 regions, the share of the milk production value was between 30% and 40% of the total agricultural production value.

These regions were in Germany (6 regions), the Netherlands (3 regions), Sweden (2 regions), Austria (1 region), Spain (1 region), and in France (1 region).